Telecommunications systems, cable television systems and data communication networks use optical networks to rapidly convey large amounts of information between remote points. In an optical network, information is conveyed in the form of optical signals through optical fibers. Optical fibers comprise thin strands of glass capable of communicating the signals over long distances with very low loss. Optical networks often employ wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) or dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) to increase transmission capacity. In WDM and DWDM networks, a number of optical channels are carried in each fiber at disparate wavelengths, thereby increasing network capacity. WDM, DWDM, or other multi-wavelength transmission techniques are employed in optical networks to increase the aggregate bandwidth per optical fiber. Without WDM or DWDM, the bandwidth in networks would be limited to the bit rate of solely one wavelength. With more bandwidth, optical networks are capable of transmitting greater amounts of information.
As the need for data and information increase, more geographically distributed data centers may be attached to the physical Internet infrastructure to accommodate increasing demand for computational and storage resources. The physical network infrastructure may support many applications that may require widely-dispersed computing resources due to service locality, e.g., geographical service distribution for a better customer experience, high definition video streaming, and data backup services. Network virtualization may provide a scheme for addressing the growth and inflexibility of the physical infrastructure. Virtual network (VN) mapping may allocate physical resources for network virtualization.